Trust

The View from Above

“God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain.” – Philip Yancey

Why is life so hard? What have I done to deserve this? Why doesn’t God do something?

Job asked those questions, too. At the beginning of his story he had it all. Then everything began to fall apart. He lost his wealth, his children, and, finally, his health. His friends insisted God wouldn’t be doing this to him if he hadn’t sinned. If he would just admit his sin, everything would be OK.

So Job began to pray asking what he had done wrong and what he could do to appease God and get the pain to stop. No answer. What he doesn’t know is that God didn’t do any of this to him. Satan did – with God’s permission. It was not punishment, it was a test to see if he would trust and serve God even when things didn’t go his way.

There are some standard take-aways from Job’s story including that God doesn’t always protect us from the evil in this world and that trouble isn’t always (maybe seldom actually) a punishment for sin.

Those are good points, but, in my mind, the greatest lesson from Job’s story is this: Though others criticized, condemned, and shamed him, it is what God said about him that mattered. And God said he was blameless and upright.

When we choose to trust Jesus with our lives, God sees us as one of his beloved children. When we focus too much on what others think of us, or what Satan says about us, maybe the story of Job will remind us to ask God what he thinks*. That’s all that matters really.

” . . . you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you (Isaiah 43:4a)

*Hint: He tells us in his word.

Is it time for a change?

“How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me . . ?” – Philip Yancey

Every now and then in our lives, we long for change – wanting something new, different, challenging, inspiring. It’s natural at those times to try to find the satisfaction we need by adjusting externals: rearranging the furniture, taking a trip, or changing jobs. Those things, though, are superficial compared to an internal change that will truly make a difference.

It might be wise at times of dissatisfaction to pause and ask God if there is something in our lives he wants to change. His ideas of what we really need are surely better than our own temporary fixes. I had a friend who daily prayed, “Lord, meet me at the point of my deepest necessity.” That’s the kind of change that will fulfill the longings we have. Only he knows our “deepest necessity.”

I can’t possibly say it better than Paul:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2 The Message)

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” – Isaiah 43:19

It’ll be OK.

“God did not say: You will not be assailed, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted, but he said: You will not be overcome. God loves us and delights in us, and so he wishes us to love him and delight in him and trust greatly in him, and all will be well.”  
—Julian of Norwich 

Sometimes we feel like we pray and nothing happens. We’re not sure God is listening and we wish we could somehow get his attention. Maybe the key to connecting with God’s attention is giving him ours. How do we do that:

Focus: Set a time to give full attention to God. During this time, there is no multi-tasking. There is only one goal: To think about God, what he’s like, who he is, and what a privilege it is to worship him, to be allowed to talk to him.

Listen: Being very conscious of his presence, we turn to his word to read. We focus on taking it in, thinking about how it may apply to us, sensing something he really wants us to see this day. Then write it down. We may remember it, but we’re more likely to remember accurately if we write it down

Do: If he tells us something to do, we do it as soon as reasonably possible. A delay shows lack of priority. The urgency will get lost the longer we wait.

When we shut out everything but God, give him our full attention, and obey what he says, he will listen when we call, and we will know, without doubt, that whatever happens in our circumstance, he is working in the middle of it – no matter the outcome. All will be well.

“But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him”. – Psalm 4:3

Would it be enough?

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jacob was returning home after running for his life years earlier because Esau had threatened to kill him. As he got close to home, Jacob heard Esau was approaching with 400 men. He prayed desperate prayers for himself and his family.

Later that night, though, he went off by himself and experienced God’s presence in the form of an angel. They wrestled all night until, at last, we are told Jacob wouldn’t give up fighting until the angel blessed him. He was done asking for specifics and wanted only God’s blessing. His prayer was answered in a most unexpected way: The blessing was a new name and a limp, both of which he accepted as coming from the hand of a loving God.

That makes me wonder if we trust God enough to stop praying for specific requests, at least for awhile, and, instead, spend more of our prayer time worshiping him? Maybe for awhile we could offer prayers of submission to his will instead of offering our list of requests. What if we dared to pray “Bless me, Lord. All I need is you and whatever blessing you decide to give.”

If we really believe he knows better than we do what would meet our deepest needs, it would be enough if we just ask him to bless us and then accept whatever he gives as coming from his hand. His answer to us might be as unexpected as Jacob’s was. But it was exactly what he needed. Do we dare to pray as he did? All I need is your blessing, Lord.

“The Lord bless you
    and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;.” – Numbers 6:24-25

Things God Never Says #2

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.” – Brennan Manning

We have all experienced rejection in our lives. The close friend who moves away and you lose touch. You feel that the friendship wasn’t all you thought it was if it could fade so easily. Or an adult child turns away and doesn’t look back. The worst, though, and we’ve all seen it and some have experienced it firsthand, is when a spouse quietly announces, “I just don’t love you anymore.”

At Jesus’s last meal with his disciples before he was crucified, John tells us that Jesus, “. . . having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1b). These are friends who would that very night walk away from him in his trial and crucifixion. There was one who would betray him to authorities and another who would deny even knowing him. Jesus knew about their cowardice and disloyalty, and yet he loved them. To the end. Never wavering.

He loves us to the end, too! When we walk away, he loves us anyway. He waits for us to turn around and come back. When we are tired or discouraged, his love is always there holding us up. No matter what we do, we cannot make him stop loving us! And, the funny thing is that when we begin to believe that, it changes us. We want to please him, to talk to him about everything, to get forgiveness when we sin, to always be close. Just accept it. He’s never going to say, “I just don’t love you anymore.”

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” – Lamentations 3:22-23

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Looking for change?

“It’s much less demanding to think about God’s will for your future than it is to ask him what he wants you to do in the next ten minutes.” – Francis Chan

Do you realize how often in the Bible we read stories of instant change?

Think of the man born blind who was made to see. Do you think he thought that would happen when he woke up that morning?

Or of the Samaritan woman who, after just one conversation with Jesus, announced him as Messiah to the people of her town who had condemned her life choices. He even came into the village with her and stayed for a few days. She went from outcast to heroine instantly.

Or of the people of Israel, under enemy siege and out of food, barely surviving on scraps. Two lepers found the enemy camp hastily deserted, leaving an abundance of food behind. They went from starvation to plenty in one instant. From despair to joy. No one saw that coming.

As we look back on our lives, we sometimes can identify meeting someone who changed our life. Or making a small decision that had big consequences. Or having an opportunity we never could have anticipated. These turning points have happened to all of us.

So if you are feeling stuck now or in a rut or disappointed with the way things have turned out for you, don’t despair. God can intervene. We just need to watch for his hand and his guidance as we go through our days. Sometimes God’s changes are slow, sometimes fast, but there’s always a turning point. Today may be the day when everything changes!

“Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.” – Isaiah 43:1

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True or False?

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” – Blaise Pascal

I read once that when law enforcement officers train business owners to recognize counterfeit bills, they don’t spend any time looking at the counterfeits. Instead, they study a real bill, implanting every detail in their brains. Why? Because if they know what the real thing looks like, feels like, and smells like, they won’t be fooled by something that’s close, but counterfeit.

It’s one thing to be deceived about the validity of paper money; it’s quite another to be misled about matters of eternal consequence. The place we go to for truth we can rely on is God’s Word. The Bible is God’s revelation of ultimate truths about our purpose in this world, his character and standards, how we should relate to other human beings, how and why we should take care of the earth, and life after death. It really matters that we get those things right!

There are many theories out there about these issues, but there’s only one source of truth by which we measure everything else we hear, see, or read. If the message syncs with what God says, it’s truth. If it varies, even a little bit, it’s false. It’s of ultimate importance to know the difference.

The only way not to be misled, is for us to immerse ourselves, first of all, in reading and studying God’s Word. Then we can supplement that by listening to trusted biblical teachers and reading reliable Christian authors. When we have the truth firmly implanted in our minds and hearts, it will be easy to see and discard the counterfeits.

“Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” – Psalm 25:5

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The True God

“Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle . . . will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.” – Timothy Keller

Sometimes when we’re reading a Bible passage, we just have to stop and say, “What?” I feel that way when I read about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, who was supposed to be the one through whom God would fulfill all the promises he had made to Abraham. What could God be thinking?

Then I realize that the fact that we don’t know what God was thinking reinforces his deity. His thoughts are way beyond any we could think. His purposes are often hidden and we don’t understand what he’s up to. He is far beyond our human ability to imagine or understand.

God has revealed a lot about himself in the Bible. But not everything – not even close.

We read about other gods like those in mythology. These are gods that are like exaggerated humans, with human characteristics and idiosyncracies. We can see how a human could imagine a Zeus or a Hercules.

The God we know is different from gods of human imagination. He’s not like a giant or exaggerated human. He is, as the theologians say, totally “other” – different from us in every way. And because mere humans could never have dreamed up a god like our God, that makes his reality more trustworthy. Not being able to understand him completely is part of our assurance that he is the real, the revealed, the only God of the universe.

So, instead of objecting to his decisions or direction, I am learning to trust that he is God. And he is good. That may be enough to know for now.

“. . . great things he does, which we cannot comprehend.” – Job 37:5

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He sees.

 “An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence.” – John Eldridge

Have you ever tried to avoid someone and then found yourself face-to-face with that person in a situation from which you couldn’t escape? It’s happened to all of us!

I think Zaccheaus in 1st-Century Jericho may have found himself in that predicament. The crowds were great and Zacheaus was not a favorite among the people because he collected taxes for the hated Romans. Apparently he had a curiosity about Jesus and wanted to know more, but only from a distance. He climbed the sycamore tree because he wanted to see, but not to be seen.

But, this is Jesus, right? He doesn’t miss anything! Of course he sees this little man in the big tree and is not going to let him get away with hiding. He calls him down from the tree. And, if that’s not scary enough, he then invites himself to Zaccheaus’ house for a meal. Zaccheaus couldn’t hide from Jesus, but he did get to know more about him! And his life was tranformed forever in that one encounter.

We don’t have to hide our struggles. Jesus sees. We don’t have to be embarrassed about our doubts. Jesus sees. He sees our joy, too. When we are kind or generous, he sees. When we are afraid or anxious, he sees. He even sees us when we’re trying to hide.

He invites us to come out of hiding, and he waits for our response. Jesus always sees. And he looks on us with grace, love, and forgiveness.

“You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.” – Psalm 139:2-3

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But, I don’t understand.

“You need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we think.” – Brother Lawrence

Meet our cat, Abi. She likes everything to always be the same. She likes her Amazon box. She loves to be brushed.

She does not love being put in her carrier to ride in the car. Scary. Might end up at the vet. And her cries are like prayers asking us to set her free.

If you have a pet, you can relate, right? Have you ever thought that our relationship to our pets might be somewhat parallel God’s relationship to us? He knows what we like, but there are times he put us through something equivalent to getting in the carrier to go to the vet. We don’t understand how what he’s doing is for our good. For us it’s just scary and uncomfortable, so we cry out to him in prayer.

Can you imagine how infinitely more God loves us than we love our pets? He faithfully walks with us as we suffer, but his love is too great to give us the relief we pray for. Relief won’t come until he has accomplished his purposes for us and maybe for those around us.

We cannot understand that kind of love from a human perspective. We can only find glimpses as we ourselves cause necessary pain to someone we love even though they can’t understand why.

Know this: God loves us infinitely. He’s always working for our good. And he walks with us through the struggles.

Sense his presence. Trust his love. Something good is happening even when we can’t see it.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” – 1 Peter 5:10